In Easter Speech, Pope Urges Peace in Korea, Syria

Pope Francis holds a disabled child in his arms after celebrating Easter Mass before thousands of people in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sunday.
European Pressphoto Agency

By

Gordon Fairclough

Updated March 31, 2013 2:21 p.m. ET

VATICAN CITY—The new leader of the world's Roman Catholics urged a speedy resolution of the bloody civil war in Syria and an end to the standoff on the Korean peninsula in his first Easter address on Sunday.

Pope Francis—who since his election in mid-March has made social justice and the church's duty to the poor central themes in his public remarks—also called for change in a world "still divided by greed looking for easy gain."

Pope Francis led his first Easter Mass in St. Peters Square before a crowd of some 250,000 people. Photo: Associated Press

From the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the pope spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of about 250,000 cheering and applauding people jammed into the square below, after a Mass marking Christianity's most important holiday.

"We implore peace for all the world," he said, listing conflicts around the globe, between Israelis and Palestinians and in African countries from Mali to the Central African Republic, where fighting has driven people from their homes.

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Of Syria, he said: "How much blood has been shed? And how much suffering must there still be before a political solution to the crisis will be found?"

Celebrating his first Easter as pontiff, Francis stuck to the humble style he has embraced since assuming the office, wearing simple vestments and riding through the crowd in an open jeep, waving and kissing babies handed up to him.

A man in the crowd gave the pope a jersey from his favorite Argentine soccer team, the Saints of San Lorenzo, emblazoned with his surname: Bergoglio. Before becoming pope, Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires. He also paused to take a disabled boy in his arms, kissing and speaking to the child.

Since succeeding Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in February citing age and frailty, Pope Francis has used a series of carefully chosen words and symbolic gestures to signal what for many appear to be significant shifts in church priorities.

He has so far declined to move into the grand papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace, preferring to stay for now at a Vatican guesthouse where he has been living and dining with other clergy. During a Holy Thursday ritual, he bathed the feet of 12 prisoners, including women and Muslims, in a juvenile detention facility.

ENLARGE

Pope Francis arrives to celebrate the Easter Holy Mass at St Peter's Square, Vatican City on Sunday.
European Pressphoto Agency

Francis, the first pope to name himself after St. Francis, who renounced wealth to preach to the poor, has emphasized his job as bishop of Rome—one of the pope's titles—highlighting the importance of the pastoral role of priests and bishops.

On Sunday, he lamented that the world is "still divided by greed looking for easy gain, wounded by the selfishness which threatens human life and family," and "torn apart by violence linked to drug trafficking and by the iniquitous exploitation of natural resources."

The pope appealed to his listeners to be "responsible guardians of creation."

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